As the results for the American Presidency starting to flow, Barack Obama is the new American President. But before the election started, Obama won in the Internet battle for voters. His YouTube videos got more views than Mccain's. His Facebook strategy proved to be better than his competitor. His fundraising worked better than Mccain's federal funding support.
It will be pretentious to say that social media made Obama- there are far greater reasons that he is the new American president. But Obama proved that these tools are legitimate, and that social and political change can be supported and maybe even won, by smart internet strategy - and understanding of how to get the message out to users.
Have a great, inspiring day.
3 Comments
He and his team definitely beat the online game as well. I heard his twitter was pretty boring, but the site was great.
May we have an inspiring 8 years, is what I hope…
Yes, he used the internet well, especially in fundraising. But his opponents did as well especially in spreading falsehoods about him. You don’t know how many emails about Obama (and some horrible thing about him) I had to sort through every day and how many people bought into that. So in some respects, I think it balanced out. But nothing drove this election more than events on the ground and George Bush in White House.
It goes way beyond videos and websites. The Obama team did an integrated social media strategy using social networks, emails, text messaging and of course video. We have begun to look in more detail about what everyone else can learn from it.
We found 11 Tips for Email from the Campaign here: http://blog.see3.net/2008/11/04/11-email-tips-from-the-presidential-campaigns/
And, Obama is moving all of this strategy from campaign mode to governing mode at http://change.gov